Growing Pains

I sweat in the cold. I danced my legs down to my knees and ran until I couldn’t fill my lungs. My feet touched carpet and tile floor, leather couch, round table, bright French doors. Lights so intense I could believe that no one was out there, in an expanse so black that the darkness hummed. I got six shots in each arm (I hated those doctors) and I couldn’t touch the raised red bumps the size of quarters on little arms. I hated that raised red skin that the grass gave me, and the way it’d stick to my clothes when I laid in it, when I rolled in it and ran in it. I came home in that grass, to lights that hung year round, lights that marked my home. We ran so fast I was scared I’d never catch my breath, when the bank took those lights. I left behind a growing palm, and with mine I clutched my life and wished it care. New French doors shone with damaged light. New French doors, I stood in a kitchen where I could touch the walls if I reached my arms out. There was no lawn in the back; there was stone and blooming trees that make me sneeze. In a new yard I swept petals on concrete. Now I had to turn left to go to my room.

There is less light and less air and that is because of the smoke. My eyes and my skin are red and I am half in love and half out of it. Red skin means that the grass jabbed through thick clothes just to scratch my skin. It means that the gorgeous rarity of undaunted bugs walking on me, crawling on me and jumping on me, was reality as I sat in the grass. It means I was natural, existing somewhere between flora and fauna; it means I was meant to be there, like the trees or the grass, expected to be there. Red eyes mean I had to feel a slimy cough drop coat a red throat and I had to rub my eyes to make them redder. But I can make them even redder as I go in the water and be lax, opening my eyes against the water and looking up at the sun. Pressure is pushing me up and squeezing me in, and my skin is red as I swim up to the sky. I remember when we emptied this pool, and I remember the grass bowing down as the water hit its back as hard as a supernova; stepping back up as graceful as a ballerina. I remember smelling the breeze and pretending the whole world didn’t go beyond this ugly backyard. I took a picture of that peace because it is rare; and, because it is rare, I keep it covered, saved for the times when I can only see the sun in thick rays blessing the ground.

I already talked of Michelangelo, I already saved a life I did not own. I left for Eden, this place foaming with peace, and I drown in the green, in the grass. I speak in tongues and eat the leaves and sleep on pillows made of driftwood and water. The grass is different but it holds me up; it holds a newer, calmer, browner skin up. I can stroll without moving my legs and the birds are nice and the animals are calm. I keep covered the warm, two hands heated on a hot vessel, sleeve over hand, hand under jumper; I feel every season in a day. There is another blinding light, and this time it soothes and rests and nurtures. This forgiving sun warms my field, my wood walls, my thick rugs on thick floors as I rest in the paint-stroke flowers and soft leaves on trees. Silk grass dances in the breeze, and the limbs of married trees keep time. If I stand outward in front of my home I can see dipping expanses, high stones, and winds and bugs bouncing on waters. The leaves eat me back when I stay outside, so I know I want to be wrapped in baby pink silk and laid just below the grass.